NHL asking for trouble with archaic rules like “instigating with a visor” that have outlived their purpose

Edmonton hockey fans who may have been looking forward to seeing the youngest captain in NHL history tonight will be deprived of that pleasure, as 19-year-old star Gabriel Landeskog has been ruled out of the Colorado Avalanche line-up with “head and leg” injuries.

Landeskog was hurt on Saturday afternoon when he was drilled by Brad Stuart of San Jose Sharks in a controversial incident, captured in this video:

No penalty was called as Landeskog wobbled to the bench; seconds later, Colorado defenceman Ryan O’Byrne chased down Stuart, engaged in something of a one-sided fight, and wound up with 19 minutes in penalties to Stuart’s 5. Among his sins was a minor for instigating and a second minor for “instigating with a visor”. San Jose scored twice on the double-powerplay to break open a scoreless tie and cruised to a 4-0 win. Landeskog and O’Byrne returned to the game in the second period but were unable to turn the tide.

Even though I had no dog in that particular fight (pardon the expression), the fundamental unfairness of the situation had me going ballistic on Twitter right at the time (Jan 26). The central tenet of my argument was “There will be a bigger target than ever on star players if #NHL continues to reward teams taking runs at them with extra powerplays.”

Now comes word that Landeskog, who played all 82 games last year in winning the Calder Trophy, will miss the first game of his pro career in Edmonton tonight. A “break” for the home side, some might think, but in the bigger picture hockey fans are the losers anytime a star is lost to injury. Let’s hope this one is short-term and Landeskog’s absence is precautionary; still, one wonders about what precautions might have been taken before now.

The hit and its immediate aftermath left this observer asking several distinct questions about the NHL’s seemingly archaic policies towards protecting players’ heads. In this time of Bob Probert, Junior Seau and so many more tragic cases, and the increasingly litigious environment surrounding this entire issue, the league would be well-served to again revisit its standards. Even “new” rules that were introduced for what seemed sensible reasons at the time, such as the “instigating with a visor” penalty that perhaps encourages even more dangerous behaviour than it discourages. Given the litigation the league is potentially exposing its own heads to, this latter rule should be rescinded yesterday. More on this in a moment.

There’s no particular priority to those five (!) distinct questions about player safety, they’re all equally important, so let’s just start at the beginning. I’ll then welcome your opinion in the reader poll at bottom.

1) Direct blows to the head. In many respects the contact by Stuart was a textbook big hit, that he stepped up and nailed a player who had his head down both figuratively and literally. Stuart exploded up and into the hit, and with Landeskog stooped and exposed, the first point of contact was his head. If that happened in an IIHF game, it would be pretty much an automatic five and a game. In this case, Stuart got nothing. Indeed, his team was ultimately rewarded after his headshot with a pair of powerplays!

2) Fighting. O’Byrne responded in the time-honoured NHL way. Penalty or no penalty, in his view as a teammate the line had been crossed, so he went directly after Stuart. Every punch that he threw was intended to be a head shot. This is not quite legal in the NHL, but in its basic form fighting is punished by only a five-minute penalty and no disqualification from the game. In this respect hockey is different from all the other “major” team sports, and an area where it might be particularly vulnerable.

3) Instigating. The grey area separating what is technically legal (or deemed legal by the zèbres du jour) and what “crosses the line” from a teammate’s perspective is case-dependent but clearly follows different standards. The players tend to respond primarily to how violent/dangerous was the hit, with a further important factor being who it was that got nailed. It follows that if a team can find that borderline territory and goad an opponent into taking an instigator penalty, that’s a good thing. One sure way to do that is big hits on star players, which commonly draws a response from the hittee’s team. With the instigator rule in place, that potentially confers an even bigger advantage on the team taking liberties with the other side’s star. If you clobber the guy, chances are you’ll even wind up with a powerplay!

4) “Instigating with a visor”. Or even two powerplays. This rule change came about quite some time ago, I’m thinking the ’90s although I can’t find a specific reference. I do recall that the idea at the time was that with relatively few players in the league wearing a visor, those that started trouble while wearing one had a doubly unfair advantage. In particular there were a couple of punks like Claude Lemieux (as memory serves) who picked their spots while “hiding behind the visor”, as the Don Cherrys of the day (including Don Cherry himself) tended to put it. That slanted the conversation against said punks, and the rule change followed shortly thereafter.

Two important things have changed since. One is the fact that by far the majority of players now wear the facial protection. Last year it was determined that some 70% of all players now wear one, up from <30% a decade previous. Thus the player being instigated is very likely to be wearing a visor himself, as was the case with Stuart, or in last week’s equally ridiculous application of that rule in the Ladi Smid-Jordan Nolan tilt. If both players are wearing a visor, what advantage does the instigator have, exactly?

What’s the alternative? NHL Apologist of Officials Mike Murphy touched on this last week on the Jason Gregor show, when he suggested Smid could/should have removed his helmet. Some players do this voluntarily, but for the NHL to explicitly endorse that alternative as Murphy did, opens the league up to a world of hurt. Sure, a fighter might break a finger punching a visor, but much worse consequences can accrue to a player who loses his helmet, willingly or otherwise, before/during a fight. May the heavens forbid, but if something like that were to happen in the NHL — which both allows fighting while discouraging fighters from wearing their head protection — the consequences could be dire on a number of levels. Don Sanderson’s death, which occurred much more recently than this rule came about, not only graphically demonstrated what can happen, it surely established some sort of legal precedent.

Perish the thought … except they need to think about things like this.

5) Concussion protocol. Not sure exactly what happened in Landeskog’s case. TOI data shows that he didn’t play from the time of the incident at 15:40 of the first period, until 3:08 of the second, which including the intermission is sufficient time for him to at least have gone to the quiet room and been cleared to return. The question will remain, if he has a head injury on Monday, how did he get such clearance during the game on Saturday? As we’ve seen in a number of high-profile cases, Sidney Crosby among them, multiple concussions in short order are exceedingly dangerous to a player’s life, let alone his career.

Who knows what sort of bump Landeskog might have taken in the second or third period of that game to exacerbate his issues. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to watch the video up top and recognize that he was considerably the worse for wear after the Stuart hit; that he was allowed back in that game and is now sidelined is yet another black eye for the NHL.

As a hockey fan I want to see the game’s stars on the ice, thanks all the same. As a human being, even as I thrill to the occasional big hit, I don’t wish the sort of misfortune that has befallen Eric Lindros, Keith Primeau, or Chris Pronger on my worst enemy. The more that can be done to protect players’ heads, the better. If that means a further evolution in our thinking of what’s acceptable, so be it.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the “X” in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.